How do you think people reacted when the car began replace horses and wagons? Many were terrified (maybe rightfully so), but the convenience of fast automobile transportation quickly overcame the old demand for horse-drawn transport.

Self-driving cars will have an early-adopter market on par with other “niche” cars like hybrids. When others begin to see the convenience and safety of these vehicles, their fears will be assuaged. The market share of self driving cars will grow signficantly, especially with younger generations.

Any idea what will happen to motorcycles, mopeds and bicycles that currently share the road? How will their presence affect the self-driven vehicles? When will mass-transit (mostly buses in larger municipalities) be part of the transition?

I believe this particular element of the future will take a while to get here– which is kind of a shame.

The most startling reaction I’ve seen is from the so called “Oracle” Warren Buffett who says he wouldn’t invest because he thinks people would not trust machines to drive for them. I think this quote will be one of those quotes we look back on in mirth, like when Scientific American, in 1909, stated “That the automobile has practically reached the limit of its development is suggested by the fact that during the past year no improvements of a radical nature have been introduced.”

The future’s driverless, whether we like it or not.

As an “expert auto tester” Mr. Champion knows that accidents more often occur at intersections… which for the computer-driven vehicle is one of the easiest-to-manage scenarios thanks to signage, signals, and the like. Proximity detection between vehicles (whether RFID, Wi-Fi, what-have-you) and all vehicles will broadcast their own locations, even if they don’t read (think “smart” license plate attached to dumb vehicle).

It is so obvious (to me at least) that future generations will look with pity on us, who lived through the “bloody highway” epoch.

How fast can self-driving cars go? Wouldn’t faster cars reduce travel time and leave fewer cars on the road? Wouldn’t faster cars mean fewer trips by air? Fewer TSA pat-downs would also save travelers time at the airport, right?

Time spent driving cars is pretty much wasted unless you can multi-task effectively (you probably can’t) or unless you’re one of those people who still enjoys driving. Automation that eliminates mindless-repetitive tasks is what we’re aiming for in much of our lives and work, isn’t it? I like the idea of never having to drive myself anywhere again yet still be able to travel where I want at my convenience. And while I can see the benefits of self-driving cars I’d like the powers that be to re-imagine what a self-driving vehicle would really require.

A computer can have a 360 degrees high resolution view of the world. It can react within a hundreth of a second and it can control the car with a precision we will never have. It won’t get visually impaired or drunk, it can see in the dark and it will be able to calculate velocity, acceleration and inertia of all moving objects so it can predict what will happen in the next few seconds.

It doesn’t matter that human can understand the other driver better in an intersection. The speed in those situations is so slow there is no risk for any serious accidents anyway.